


gone, gone, gone (but you were never alone)

by badacts



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Claustrophobia, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: It’s dark, and Bruce can’t breathe.He has about six clear seconds of memory - dread, a tilting floor, him falling and reaching and missing - and also, from before that, a vague recollection of what he had for lunch and a sharper one of the paperwork he filled out for HR this morning. Nothing clear enough to determine where he is right now, and why his ribcage is being crushed into his spine.He isn’t called ‘detective’ for nothing, though. The concrete dust in his mouth and the sounds around him of weights still shifting to settle is enough of a clue to get a vague idea.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Comments: 23
Kudos: 427





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm here now and you can't get rid of me.

It’s dark, and Bruce can’t breathe.

He has about six clear seconds of memory - dread, a tilting floor, him falling and reaching and  _ missing _ \- and also, from before that, a vague recollection of what he had for lunch and a sharper one of the paperwork he filled out for HR this morning. Nothing clear enough to determine where he is right now, and why his ribcage is being crushed into his spine.

He isn’t called ‘detective’ for nothing, though. The concrete dust in his mouth and the sounds around him of weights still shifting to settle is enough of a clue to get a vague idea.

The question is, Bruce or Batman? It’s one that he answers with a twitch of his fingers, ignoring the pain from a broken forearm to touch his scalp. He finds the familiar pricked bat ears there and sighs a little with relief. Batman being injured is easier to deal with than Bruce Wayne, provided that the GCFD don’t need to dig him out of wherever he is.

When he gropes at it, he finds the protective casing that houses the earpiece in his cowl is broken apart, the earpiece itself fractured inside it. No wonder his head hurts - it would have taken a hell of a hit to break it. The casing might have saved him from a fatal brain injury.

He says ‘might’ because he might not yet be saved at all. The ache only barely bounded by his skull might be a precursor of something unsurvivable. Also, he might not get out here, head injury or no.

As he considers that, there’s a moan from off to his left, deep and rough. It’s ludicrous that Bruce can recognise the voice from that alone, but he knows his kids better than he knows his own face in the mirror. His heart begins to race.

“Jason,” he says. It hurts his chest to speak.

There’s a twitch of motion from Jason - absent, and then more purposeful. He groans a little like he’s waking, the same way he did when he was thirteen and didn’t want to get up for school after a too-late night. 

It cuts off dead. There’s the scratch of fabric against concrete, the sound of breathing.

Then, he screams.

In the tight space they’re in, it takes a moment for Bruce to resolve the strength of the sound into words.

“No!” Jason yelps. It sounds like he’s thrashing, pushing at his surroundings. There’s a dull murmur of movement overhead in response like a threat. “Nonononono please.  _ Please _ . No.”

Then, “Bruce, Bruce, B, Bruce,  _ please no, PLEASE NO!” _ His voice cracks apart at the end with a gulping sob, devolving entirely.

Sometimes, Bruce feels like he’s still twenty, or twelve all over again. And then sometimes he feels like he’s lived a thousand years, every one of them more hellish than the last. Listening to his second son weep in terror puts him firmly into the second category.

“Jay,” Bruce says, except the sound barely makes it out from between his teeth. “ _ Jason. _ ”

He wishes he could move. Touching Jason in a moment like this is a dangerous game, but he’s gone deaf with remembered trauma. Bruce keeps saying his name, low and calm, waiting to break through the only way he can right now and painfully aware of how long it’s taking.

Jason, who has been beating ineffectually at his confines, suddenly seems to stiffen. His attention is a lead weight.

“Jay,” Bruce rasps, the same way he has been for minutes. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“...Bruce?” 

“Yes. Breathe for me.”

“Okay,” Jason agrees, childlike. “What happened?”

“Can you move?” Bruce asks instead of answering. “Are you hurt?”

“Uh. I don’t…” his breathing picks up audibly. 

It feels awful to do it. Bruce says it anyway, voice firm. “Robin. Report.”

Jason hasn’t been Robin for years, and would lose it if Bruce called him that at any other time. Now, though, he replies immediately, “I’m okay. I think my arm’s broken. Left thigh laceration. I’m stuck.”

“Can you reach your belt? Right side.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“There’s a glowstick.”

“Oh,” Jason says, like he doesn’t carry it with him at all times. It was one of the first things Bruce noticed after the guns. There’s some rustling, and then a plasticky crackle that turns into a soft blue glow.

Jason, bubbled in the centre of it, has lost his helmet at some point - maybe he wasn’t wearing it to start with? His eyes behind the red domino are wide enough to show white all around the irises. He’s on his back a couple of metres from Bruce, in the same foot-high void which is pressing Bruce down, and there’s a growing puddle of black-in-the-light blood underneath him.

At the same time Bruce is examining him, Jason is looking back. There’s a note of dread in his voice when he says, “ _ Bruce _ .”

“I’m here,” Bruce says, deliberately misunderstanding and staunchly not looking down at himself. He forces his hand to grip at his cowl so he can pull it away from his face. “Just focus on me.”

“I need to get out,” Jason whispers back, and he doesn’t mean because of the bleeding. His face says he thinks he’s on the knife-edge of losing it entirely, that he’s not sure he can come back from that.

“I know,” Bruce soothes, that half-forgotten language he used on all his kids when they were young enough to look to him for it, or now when they’re hurt badly enough they forget they’re grown now. It flows, easy. “But you’re not there. You’re here with me and we’re going to get out of here. Tell me what you can see.”

“Uh. Dirt,” Jason says. “No. That’s concrete. Right?”

“Yes,” Bruce confirms. “Any gaps above you?”

“Maybe?” Jason asks. “It’s. Dark.”

So they’re far enough under that there’s no light getting to them. There’s air, though - they’d be dead by now if there wasn’t. Bruce tries to adjust himself and ends up writhing like a rat pinned in a trap, trying to keep the gasp in.

Even tangled up in flashbacks as he is, Jason notices that. “B?”

“I’m okay,” Bruce says, a lie that he only permits himself for Jason’s benefit. Internally he thinks, faintly,  _ fuck _ , and still doesn’t look down.

“I, um,” Jason says. “I’m bleeding.”

Bruce looks across, finding Jason has moved the glowstick down to try and get a glance at his thigh. The blood beneath him has spread noticeably. Dangerously. Bruce’s brain starts doing blood-volume calculations.

“Um,” Jason says, “I-”

Then the glowstick hits the ground as his eyes roll back into his skull. It rolls six inches up, illuminating his ghost-pale face and the slits of his sclera beneath his eyelashes.

Bruce’s lunge to him is aborted almost before it starts. He snarls in rage and pain, finally giving into the idea that even if Jason could wait for a rescue,  _ he _ can’t. His spine, previously spiderwebbed by Bane -

Jason might be dying right in front of him. It’s not enough that he was too late last time, helpless to do anything but cradle his lifeless body. This time he might have to watch it happen - 

When Bruce opens his mouth, it’s to say - yell, shout, scream - “ _ Superman! _ ”


	2. Chapter 2

Jason Todd isn’t afraid of the dark, but the law of averages says that if he wakes up in complete blackness? He’ll panic, blindly and destructively, breaking everything around him and himself in about equal measures.

The thing about trauma is that you tend to figure out ways to work around it. Jason’s strategies include sleeping with the hallway light on - one he didn’t figure out until he’d torn up his own bedroom at least three times. But, still, the triggers can get you; like waking in the middle of the night with the power out. Or coming to in the bowels of a collapsed building. 

Of course, the law of averages isn’t everything. Because he wakes up in darkness this time, too, but he doesn’t panic. Because he isn’t alone. 

There are fingers in his hair, comforting rather than searching. A heartbeat under his ear, strong and steady. A strange voice that eventually resolves into a familiar one, and then into actual words. “It’s okay, Little Wing. You’re okay.”

“Dick?” Jason says, into what feels like Dick’s shirtfront. It comes out like, _umph?_

“Heeey,” Dick replies, and it’s obvious that he’s smiling from his voice. Almost as obvious as it is that he’s scared. “Don’t move, okay?”

Last thing Jason remembers, Dick wasn’t here. He was alone, and then - no, he wasn’t alone. Bruce was -

Bruce was _hurt_.

“Where’s B?” Jason asks, shaking his head just a little in Dick’s hold. He wants to see his face.

“He took Air Superman out of here,” Dick replies. “Stay still, Jay. Clark’s coming back for you, but he wasn’t planning on breaking the sound barrier so you have to be patient.”

“‘M okay,” Jason says, which may or may not be true. “Let me - he’s - his legs.” Something about Bruce’s legs. He can’t quite remember the specifics.

“You aren’t okay,” another voice says, from down by his hip. “You almost bled out. Don’t move.”

“Red!” Dick hisses.

“What?” Tim replies, and Dick is distracted enough to let Jason’s head move this time.

What he sees is blood. A lot of it. Red Robin has a tourniquet jacked tight around Jason’s thigh - and really, it’s impressive he didn’t feel that - or maybe worrying - and a thin band of red connects their arms. It takes Jason a moment to realise it’s rubber tubing joining them together.

“I’m O negative,” Tim explains without looking up. “We don’t exactly have the luxury of blood bags down here.” Because he’s directly transfusing Jason, vein to vein; something they all know how to do but something Jason has never done, and has certainly never had done to him. 

It’s vaguely disgusting, and a little bit annoying that Tim would be the one to be doing it, of all people. On the other hand, the ability to move his head out of Dick’s cleavage has also given Jason the ability to see their surroundings.

Still buried. 

He shudders once, convulsively. Tim swears, and Dick’s hand tightens on Jason’s shoulder. “You okay, Little Wing?”

Another shudder. Jason asks, in a too-small voice, “Can we go?”

It’s roomier down here now, like the space from before was pried open like an oyster shell. But it’s still close, still only lit by the miniature emergency lanterns Dick and Tim would have been carrying, and still cloyingly claustrophobic.

“In a little bit,” Dick soothes, or tries to. Jason isn’t feeling particularly soothed right now.

Tim, prescient, reaches out and neatly kinks the tubing before disconnecting Jason’s end. That’s about when Jason starts to tremble all over, arms and legs jittering in place. His teeth begin to chatter in his jaw hard enough that his vision blurs.

“Jesus!” Dick hisses, “Is he seizing?”

“Anxiety meets adrenaline crash,” Tim replies more calmly, pressing a supportive hand over the field-dressed wound on Jason’s thigh. Dick instantly curls Jason’s head firmly back into his belly, anchoring him in his lap.

 _Get me out_ , Jason tries to say, but gives up immediately when his mouth just stutters, “G-g-g-guh,” before breaking to nothing. 

“Hey,” Dick says, tilting Jason’s face. “Look at me. Yeah, that’s it.” His eyes look darker in the low light, where he’s usually a comfortable azure middle-ground between Bruce’s ice-grey and Tim’s blue-almost-hazel, but the calm connection in them is the best thing Jason has seen today. Not that that’s saying much. 

Doesn’t stop Jason shaking, but it does stop him from trying to crawl his way out of here, leg wound be damned.

“How far away is,” Tim mutters into his earpiece, and then, with surprise, “B!”

Dick doesn’t break Jason’s gaze, but he does grin, fumbling at his ear and then Jason’s.

“Jaylad,” Bruce says in his ear, familiar and calm. He’s rasping more than usual, but other than that no one would know he was injured at all by his voice. It’s only the familiar name that lets Jason know this is a private line. “Superman is on his way.”

“I’m here!” Clark calls from above, his voice faint by distance. Jason determinedly doesn’t think about that distance any further. “Give me a minute. I don’t want to rush.”

“B,” Jason says. He personally sounds like he’s been gargling rocks, which is an improvement on ‘twelve-year-old girl’ from earlier. 

“Breathe with me,” Bruce says, an order but not. And just like that Jason remembers how to exhale, the caught-tight tension in his limbs lessening and the shuddering falling away. It leaves him limp and exhausted.

“Hey boys,” Clark says, sliding into the space. His shoulders take up more room than he deserves, but he makes up for it by saying, “Ready to get out of here?”

“More than,” Dick says for Jason, transferring him across into Superman’s weirdly strong embrace. It’s not that Jason doesn’t _know_ Clark is superhuman, but it’s one thing to know it, and another to be cradled like a baby when you’re six-two and pushing two-twenty pounds. “Watch his arm.”

“Got it,” Clark replies seriously and not at all like he’s humouring Dick.

“I’ve left the catheter situated,” Tim is saying, like the robot he pretends to be. The both of them are kind of hovering, like they wish they could catch a ride too or something, but it’s Dick who smacks a kiss on Jason’s forehead - _ugh_ \- and says, “Get outta here. See you at home, Jay.”

Jason’s head lolls against Clark’s warm-granite shoulder as they drift upwards. It’s like a particularly comfortable elevator. The effect is heightened by the fact that the tunnel up through the debris seems to have been melted with heat vision, to the point where the concrete is blackened and the steel remnants are melted in a perfect circular arc. “What’s the melting point of concrete?” 

“Dunno, buddy,” Clark replies easily. “We’re nearly out.”

It’s still dark outside, even though Jason feels like he’s been underground for days. The building, or what’s left of it, falls away beneath him, dark and still rising dust with the cordon of red and blue lights around it. It feels like the sky is rushing to meet him, so huge and so dark. 

“Deep breaths,” Clark says, interrupting Jason’s impression of somehow falling up, up, up.

“Keep breathing,” Bruce says in his ear at the same time, and then nothing. He must be muting his end of the line.

“Sure,” Jason slurs to both of them, and then, to Clark, “Hey. How’d you know? About us being stuck.”

“Your dad yelled for me,” Clark tells him, conspiratorial. “First time for everything, huh?”

“Huh,” Jason considers, with a slow roll of his stomach. “Must be really hurt.” He always thought Bruce would rather die than ask for help. But maybe he should have classified it as ‘rather _almost_ die’. 

“He thought _you_ were,” Clark replies. “Both of you are going to be fine, though.”

Jason feels like his head is about to pop off and fall back to earth. “Oh. Cool.”

Then they’re dropping into the Cave Hangar, having covered half of Gotham in minutes. Alfred is waiting for them, a warm hand pushed into his hair and a welcoming, “Master Jason”. Jason is laid down and moved again, looking up into the cavernous ceiling of the Cave where the bats sleep. Underground, but safe. 

“Jay.” Another hand on his hair, different angle. When he opens eyes that he doesn’t remember closing, Bruce is right there. Lying down and with two black eyes, but here. “Jay.” No reminder to keep breathing. It’s coming easy now, despite the pain.

He’s safe. He breathes.


End file.
